Somewhere in that timelost weekend it occurred to me that I could have the solution to all of my problems right here in this Tylenol bottle.
I was jobless and broke. Surely I could think of a way to use the pills to turn a small buck or two?
Nothing audacious, nothing that would screw with the thin, gossamer fabric of the space-time continuum. I’ve watched enough bad science fiction movies to know the rules. I also realized that if it were possible to travel back into the past to steal things, countless priceless artifacts would have gone missing on a regular basis. There would be no crown jewels. No
So after a while, I came up with the idea of vintage paperbacks and comic books.
Think about it. They were mass produced, cheap and wouldn’t be missed in their own time. And they were worth a great deal more in the present.
When I’d been gainfully employed at the
A quarter in one year, $50 in another. I was no Wharton School grad, but even I could see this was an amazing return on investment.
So I did a trial run to see if I could carry something back to the present. I took a half pill, went back to March 30, 1972. I walked across the street. On the rack was a fresh copy of
I’d never owned the original. But parts of it, along with pages from later issues, had been cannibalized and turned into a book-and-record set, which my father left under the tree for me Christmas 1978. He loved the classic monsters—your Draculas, your Frankensteins, your Wolfmen. And I loved that book-and-record, even though it terrified the crap out of me.
Lingering by the comic rack, I finally reached for it, trying to play it all stealthy. I was invisible, so I had that going for me. No one could see me. Even if they could, who would think anything of a middle-aged guy standing near a newsstand? Still, I was nervous, like I was about to knock over a bank. My fingers fumbled. The slick cover slipped out of my grasp once, twice, three times. Could anyone see this? The world’s lamest attempt at shoplifting ever?
After another eternity of hamfistedness, I regained my finger-hold on the thing and ran for it.
Over there, kids! Look at the invisible man with the stolen werewolf comic! Jogging across Frankford Avenue, avoiding the bright headlights, looking all nervous and guilty…
Back in the office I laid down on the floor and tightly pressed the comic to my chest with my palms. I closed my eyes and waited for the dizziness to wash over me.
I snapped awake and immediately grasped at my chest with my eight good fingers.
No werewolf comic.
And with it, my idea of stealing comics and paperbacks from the past and eBaying them at a 400 percent markup in the future.
Other moneymaking schemes popped into my head, of course. I briefly thought about becoming a private eye. I could meet clients in the past, then use Google to “solve” their cases in the present. Only one problem, of course: almost nobody in the past could see me. Just that redheaded kid down on the second floor. What was I going to do, have a twelve-year-old kid be my Velda?
I could try to set up shop in the present, but there was a problem with that, too: unless I could find dozens of people who had burning questions about events from February 1972, I’d starve. There wasn’t even a good Philadelphia tragedy I could witness firsthand and turn into a book. My time-traveling abilities were limited to the point of being useless.
The only thing the pills were good for, it seemed, was walking around Philadelphia during the first few months of my life and depressing the hell out of myself.
My mother grew up on the fringes of Frankford, near Bridge Street and Torresdale Avenue. The neighborhood is still alive, but you can tell it’s had a few severe beatings. Along the way, the neighbors had gotten the idea that it was okay to throw their trash everywhere—the sidewalks, the gutter, their front porches. Windows broke and stayed broken. A few blocks away, you could hear the constant rumble of I-95.
But you couldn’t in late February 1972, because Interstate 95 hadn’t been built yet.
There were no pimped-out SUVs with throbbing subwoofers cruising the tiny streets. There was no shuttered pizza shop or deli. There was very little trash in the street gutters. There were very few broken sidewalks and crumbled curbs. In 1972 this was just another quiet middle-class neighborhood in the middle of the night.
Standing across the street, I looked at the rowhome where my mom grew up, just four from the end of the block. All the lights were out except for one: the kitchen. Somewhere in that house my mom’s father, Grandpop Ted, was probably enjoying his Saturday night, listening to polkas on the radio, drinking pull-top cans of Schaefer and burning through countless packs of Lucky Strikes. Grandpop Ted would die eighteen years later. Lung cancer.
So was I standing here for a reason? Was I supposed to cross Bridge Street, knock on the door and ask him to kindly cut back on the smoking?
After my dad was killed I spent a lot of nights in that house on Bridge Street, crashing on the green shag carpet in the living room. I’d listen to Grandpop Ted talk to Grandma Bea, both of them drinking and smoking, polkas on the radio in the background. They’d laugh. They’d fight. I’d curl up into a ball and cry a lot, but not so they could hear me.
Maybe I should walk back to my own house and leave a note for my mom:
HI ANNE!
LISTEN, THE GUITAR-PLAYING DUDE WITH A PONYTAIL YOU JUST MARRIED? UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHOULD YOU LET HIM OUT OF THE HOUSE ON SUNDAY, DECEMBER 7, 1980. TRUST ME ON THIS.
SIGNED,
A FRIEND
I drifted back into Frankford proper, which was littered with the landmarks of my childhood. Instead of a grungy Sav-N-Bag there was a clean, shiny Penn Fruit Supermarket, with new carts and freshly painted walls and rows of boxes and cans and fruit and meat and bread. Farther down on Frankford Avenue there was a poultry shop, where rotisserie chickens would spin in a case near the front window. It was night, so the birds were gone, but the rotisserie machine was still there, along with a sign advertising whole chickens, halves, legs, breasts, thighs. My stomach rumbled at the sight. There was a Kresge’s five-and-dime, with a luncheonette counter. There was a drugstore, not a chain, an honest-to-God neighborhood drugstore, also with a luncheonette counter. You could see it just beyond the front doors, even in the dark. There was a huge toy store named Snyder’s. There were record
